Forms of stress

Stress comes in many forms. In this post I will present you a one way to categorize stress. It’s a way that I use to recognize the stressors in my life and it’s quite simple and down to earth so it’s easy to follow and understand without a degree in medicine.

The problem with categorizing and recognizing stress is that it is such a general and complex term. The term stress can refer to anything from cellular level oxidative stress to construction engineering load stresses. To make things simple – when I talk about stress I am usually referring to one of, or combination of the following forms of stress. These are what form the phenomenon that we usually refer to as stress in our day to day life when we are feeling fatigued and taxed.

Mental

Mental stress is something every grown up (and sadly many children) has to face on a daily basis. From work, financial and relationship demands to simple chores like shopping for groceries, cleaning and taking out the trash we are bombarded with demands that we experience as stress. Yet the same things that cause us stress are also things that drive as forward in life and improve us as human beings.

A healthy human being with a balanced life style does not normally consider these daily chores stress. They are simply daily routines that keeps the wheels rolling. Never the less they build on our daily stress tolerance and when we face additional stress the routine chores start taking a toll on us.

When a person is chronically stressed and is no longer able to react to stress normally these daily demands and chores can become unbearably stressful and the person can no longer cope with daily life demands.

This is what you see in many depressed people – unclean apartments, lack of social connection and unemployment. So no surprise then stress and depression have a strong connection. Many specialists think that depression, anxiety and many other mental disorders are simply a symptom of chronic stress. An extreme form of chronic mental stress is burnout from work or studying.

Emotional

Sometimes emotional and mental stress are referred as just mental stress. I think they should be separated since they have some very distinct differences. Our emotions are what drive our mental function.

Without emotions there would be no motivation. Our daily life is driven by sense of accomplishment – one of the most powerful human emotions. Emotions also highly impact our decision making. We as human individuals tend to make even big decision based on emotion or “gut feeling”, some more than others.

Daily emotional stress consists mostly of our social interactions with other people (or lack thereof), unsorted worries and our own self talk and expectations. When we experience acute non-typical emotional stress the reactions are usually very strong and sometimes overwhelming.

Some examples of this are a passing of a loved one, relationship distress like divorce or being let go of a job. During times like these the emotional stress can overwhelm even the strongest of us and leave us incapable to handling any additional mental or physical stress.

Even strong positive feelings can cause a great deal of stress. A good example of this would be a teenager having a crush. The overwhelming mix of lust and love can cause a great deal of emotional stress leaving very little mental capacity for much else.

In the case of strong emotional stress it is imperative to deal with the feelings and let yourself heal before you expose yourself to any additional stress. Sometimes this might require therapy. Strong emotional stress can in worst case scenario cause a trauma and turn into a post traumatic stress disorder which can be very hard to bounce back from.

Chronic emotional stress can also accumulate over time for example from an abusive relationship, or from bullying at school or workplace. Unresolved life issues or traumas buried in the subconscious  can also cause huge mental stress even when we can’t really recall them.

Physical

Physical stress is anything and everything our body is subjected to by the environment. This includes everything from heat, air, food and hydration to physical exercise from work or leisure.

Medications, recreational drugs and environmental pollution in our air, water and food cause physical stress that we usually cannot sense since it’s happening on the cellular level. On the other hand a hard day of physical work is something we feel in our muscles and bones as pain and fatigue.

As all stress – physical stress can be acute or chronic. Acute physical stress usually makes us stronger. If we give our body enough rest and nutrients it will adapt to the stress demand. Pollution is pretty much the only exception to this since some forms of it can accumulate in our bodies.

When chronic physical stress exceeds our recovery capabilities we start to suffer from strain injuries, aching pains, fatigue and reduced physical performance. An extreme form of physical chronic stress is overtraining syndrome that is dreaded by professional athletes but many times even amateur athletes can reach this state when they don’t have a grip on their stress management and recovery. A condition resembling overtraining can also be accumulated through heavy physical work like construction if proper rest and nutrition is not taken care of.

All forms of stress are intertwined and use up energy from the same “stress pool”. If you are mentally or emotionally stressed your physical performance will suffer and vice versa. That’s why it’s crucial to look at your life as a whole when reducing stress.

So what are the mental, emotional and physical stressors in your life?